Zach Lowe has a strong argument for being the best sportswriter in America right now. Of course, sportswriter only partially describes Lowe’s role at ESPN over the last several years: he’s been a staple on television as a panelist on NBA Today,

That ESPN lost Doc Rivers (who ditched his gig as a de facto replacement for Van Gundy to take the Bucks’ coaching job) and JJ Redick (Rivers’s replacement, who ditched the network to join LeBron James’s staff with the Lakers) within sixth months of each other falls somewhere between comedy and karma.

Zach Lowe, a popular journalist, sports writer, and NBA analyst, has been laid off by ESPN. Lowe had been working for ESPN since 2015, but even before that, he was employed at Grantland, an ESPN-owned sports and pop-culture blog that has since been shut down.